HEODORE ROOSEVEUTI 







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NATIONAL STRENGTH AND 
INTERNATIONAL DUTY 



THE STAFFORD LITTLE LECTURES 
FOR 1917 



The Independence of the Executive 
By Grover Cleveland 

The Government in the Chicago Strike 
By Grover Cleveland 

The Venezuelan Boundary Controversy 
By Grover Cleveland 

Government of the Canal Zone 
By George W. Goethals 

The Two Hague Conferences 
By Joseph H. Choate 

Experiments in Government and the Essentials 

of the Constitution 

By Elihu Root 

The Balkan Wars 
By Jacob Gould Schurman 

National Strength and International Duty 
By Theodore Roosevelt 

Each $1.00 net, by mail $1.06 



NATIONAL STRENGTH AND 
INTERNATIONAL DUTY 



BY 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS 
PRINCETON 

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

1917 



216 13 



Copyright, 1917, by 
Princeton University Press 

Published December, 1917 
Printed in the United States of America 




DEC 17 1917 

©C!.A47n570 



--' V.Jt • 1 



NATIONAL STRENGTH AND 
INTERNATIONAL DUTY 

Before dealing with the proper subject 
matter of the lecture, I wish to take up 
— and brush aside — the objection to truth- 
telling glibly urged by some extremely 
partisan papers, and by some very silly 
persons, who condemn all criticism of our 
shortcomings on the pretence that "criti- 
cism tends to weaken the Government and 
is therefore disloyal." The well meaning 
persons who are misled by this shallow 
pretence would do well to ponder the fact 
that this is the position which, in reference 
to me, has been heatedly upheld by the 
Hearst papers, and by German- American 
papers like the Staats Zeitung, which in 
this war have served Germany by justify- 



2 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

ing her actions, by enthusiastically hailing 
all peace proposals which would leave her 
mistress of the international situation, and 
by assailing our Allies, especially Eng- 
land. The pro-Germans clamor for an 
indecisive peace, covertly back Germany 
or oppose our Allies, or seek to interfere 
with all proposals to make us genuinely 
efficient in the war, and by their utterances 
to rouse and increase discontent with the 
war; and then they curry favor with the 
foolish, at the same time that they con- 
tinue to serve their real purposes, by de- 
nouncing those who seek to make us more 
effective in the war by honestly endeavor- 
ing to eliminate the things that make us 
ineffective. The fact that the pro- Ger- 
mans, with ostentatious sham loyalty, de- 
nounce honest criticism of our faults 
ought to convince all honest persons who 
are also intelligent that such criticism at 
this time is vitally necessary. Such criti- 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 3 

cism, to be of use, must be made in the 
living present, and not after the event, 
and only of the dead past. Let these per- 
sons read Washington's unsparing criti- 
cisms of, and to, the Continental Con- 
gress; let them read Lincohi's merciless 
criticisms of Pierce and Buchanan; and 
they will understand that honest and 
truthful and fearless criticism of grave 
shortcomings may be absolutely indis- 
pensable in order to secure triumph in a 
grave crisis. 

Any man who preaches to others should 
rightly be required to show that he has 
himself, according to his power, acted 
upon the doctrines he preaches and that 
he has not lightly changed them or lightly 
adopted them. Moreover, any public man 
who criticizes shortcomings in the present 
should rightly be required to show that 
he has criticized similar shortcomings in 
the past, and that he has himself when in 



4 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

power endeavored to do that which he 
now holds that others ought to do or to 
have done. For this reason I make the 
following quotations from my writings in 
the past. 

In the life of Thomas Hart Benton, 
written thirty-one years ago, I put my 
position as follows: 

"After all this ruffianism was really not 
a whit worse in its effect upon the national 
character than was the case with certain of 
the Universal Peace and Non-Resistance 
developments in the Northeastern States ; 
in fact, it was more healthy. A class of 
professional non-combatants is as hurtful 
to the real healthy growth of a nation as 
is a class of fire-eaters ; for a weakness or 
folly is nationally as bad as a vice or worse 
and in the long run a [professional paci- 
fist] may be quite as undesirable a citizen 
as is a duelist. No man who is not willing 
to bear arms and to fight for his rights can 
give a good reason why he should be en- 
titled to the privilege of living in a free 
community." 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 5 

What I thus said thirty-one years ago 
I am saying now, and it is the doctrine 
which I have preached ever since. It has 
been the burden of my talk for prepared- 
ness during the last three years and a 
quarter. In the concluding sentence I 
foreshadowed the doctrine that Universal 
Service and Universal Suffrage should go 
hand in hand, because no man is fit to vote 
in a country if he is not willing to fight 
for it. 

Foolish creatures object to my calling 
attention to our gross shortcomings and 
failures at this time — our failure to pre- 
pare in advance, our failure to provide 
airplanes, our failure to provide proper 
rifles and cannon, proper equipment, 
proper gas masks, warm clothing for our 
troops in the training camps. The follow- 
ing extracts, written about the Adminis- 
tration of which I was a part, at the time 
when I was Assistant Secretary of the 



6 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

Navy, and Colonel in the Army; and 
written in reference to my own party, and 
to the Administration which I was shortly 
to join, when I was Governor of the 
State of New York: will show that I then 
took precisely the position that I take 
now. According to my belief it is the 
only wise and patriotic position, the only 
position that a self-respecting American, 
who knows the facts, has any business to 
take. 

Before the Naval War College, in 
June 1897, when I was Assistant Secre- 
tary of the Navy, I made an address in 
which I spoke, in part, as follows: 

"Arbitration is an excellent thing. But 
ultimately those who wish to see this coun- 
try at peace with foreign nations will be 
wise if they place reliance upon a first 
class fleet of first class battleships rather 
than on any arbitration treaty which the 
wit of man can devise. Cowardice in a 
race, as in an individual, is the unpardon- 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 7 

able sin, and a wilful failure to prepare 
for danger may, in its effects^ be as bad 
a^ cowardice. The timid man who cannot 
fights and the selfish, shortsighted or fool- 
ish man who will not take the steps that 
will enable him to fight, stand on almost 
the same plane. The nation must have 
physical, no less than moral courage; the 
capacity to do and dare and die at need, 
and that grim and steadfast resolution 
which alone will carry a great people 
through a great peril. Unreadiness for 
war is merely rendered more disastrous 
by readiness to bluster. It has always 
been true, and in this age it is more than 
ever true that it is too late to prepare for 
war when the time for peace has passed. 
It is too late to make ready for war when 
the fight has once begun. The preparation 
must come before that. Diplomacy is ut- 
terly useless when there is no force behind 
it; the diplomat is the servant, not the 
master, of the soldier. If, in the future, 
we have war, it will almost certainly come 
because of some action, or lack of action, 
on our part in the way of refusing to ac- 
cept responsibilities at the proper time, or 



8 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

failing to prepare for war when war does 
not threaten. An ignoble peace is even 
worse than an unsuccessful war. We ask 
for an armament fit for the nation's needs, 
not primarily to fight but to avoid fight- 
ing. Peace, like freedom, is not a gift 
that tarries long in the hands of cowards 
or of those too feeble or too short-sighted 
to deserve it, and we ask to be given the 
means to insure that honorable peace 
which alone is worth having." 

In this and in the subsequent quota- 
tions I condense, for the sake of space, 
by omitting sentences and parts of sen- 
tences, but without changing a word which 
would change the sense. I call especial 
attention to the sentences I have italicised 
in this address made over twenty-one 
years ago. At the same time, in a. book 
entitled "Naval Operations" of the War 
of 1812, I said: 

"Each [of the two main combatants in 
the war] inclined to view with suspicion 
the neutral who made a cold blooded profit 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 9 

out of the sufferings of both, . . . there 
was but one possible way to gain or keep 
the respect of either, and that was by the 
possession of power and the readiness to 
use it if necessary. There never was a bet- 
ter example of the ultimate evil caused by 
a timid effort to secure peace through the 
sacrifice of honor and the refusal to make 
preparations for war . . . [and to] find 
some patent substitute for war. Con- 
tempt is the emotion of all others which 
a nation should be least willing to arouse. 
. . . lack of preparation, laxness of or- 
ganization, invite disasters which can be 
but partially repaired. [Other things be- 
ing equal] victory in any contest will go 
to the man or the nation that has earned 
it by thorough preparation." 

As Colonel of the First Volunteer Cav- 
alry, September 10, 1898, I notified the 
Secretary of War, my official superior, as 
to conditions during the campaign, doing 
this in answer to a circular issued by Com- 
mander Major General Shafter. I set 
down the exact facts, good and bad; I 



10 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

described the confusion and the good 
jSghting both ahke. The rifles and am- 
munition were excellent and were well 
handled; items in the food supply, such 
as the corn beef, were excellent. I re- 
ported "the canned roast beef as worse 
than a failure as part of the rations, and 
the effort to eat it made some of the men 
sick." I further reported that: 

"On the return trip the rations were 
short, the water very bad and the lack of 
ice for the weak and sickly men was very 
much felt. During the month following 
the landing of the Army in Cuba the food 
supplies were generally short in quantity. 
The hardtack was often moldy, the bacon 
was usually good. Members of the Illi- 
nois Regiment at one time offered our 
men a dollar apiece for hardtacks. I 
wish to bear testimony to the energy and 
capacity of Colonel Weston, the Com- 
missary General with the Expedition: 
As regards the clothing, the blue shirts 
were excellent, the leggings were good, 
the shoes were very good, the undershirts 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 11 

not very good, the drawers bad and the 
trousers poor. Just before leaving Cuba 
most of the men were in tatters, some be- 
ing actually bare-footed while others were 
in rags or partly dressed in clothes cap- 
tured from the Spaniards. The condi- 
tions in the big hospitals in the rear were 
frightful, beyond description, from lack 
of supplies, lack of medicine, lack of 
doctors, nurses and attendants, and espe- 
cially from lack of transportation. The 
wounded and sick who were sent back suf- 
fered so much that finally we never sent 
any to the rear save in the direst need." 

These conmients were made to my su- 
perior officers when I was in the Army 
and just prior to my being nominated as 
Governor of New York. I pointed out 
the grave faults in our Administration 
then, not to embarrass the Government, 
of which I was a hearty supporter, but 
because it was a plain duty to the country 
to act precisely as I acted. Exactly the 
same reasons influence me now, when I 



12 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

point out that broom sticks are insufficient 
substitutes for rifles, or that eight men 
drilled with one rifle, without any ammu- 
nition, will not learn the work of soldier- 
ing as rapidly as if each had his own mod- 
ern rifle, or when I say that in bitter 
November weather a soldier without an 
overcoat and in a cotton uniform and 
summer underclothing and socks is not 
sufficiently clad. Unless our people thor- 
oughly and vividly understand the evil re- 
sults of failure to prepare in advance, it 
may be set down as certain that they never 
will prepare in advance. 

While Governor of New York, in No- 
vember 1899, the year before I myself ran 
as candidate for Vice-President, I made 
an earnest plea for preparedness in ad- 
vance and set forth absolutely without 
equivocation the shortcomings of the 
Army at the time of the Santiago Cam- 
paign. I said in part (again I condense, 
as in most of these quotations) : 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 13 

"The Artillery had for thirty-five years 
had no field practice that was in the slight- 
est degree adequate to its needs. The 
bureaus in Washington were absolutely 
enmeshed in red tape and were held, for 
the most part, by elderly men of fine rec- 
ords in the past who were no longer fit 
to break through routine and to show the 
extraordinary energy, business capacity, 
initiative and willingness to accept re- 
sponsibility which were needed. The 
Santiago campaign was a welter of con- 
fusion with utter lack of organization and 
of that skilled leadership which can come 
only through practice. The Army was 
more than once uncomfortably near dis- 
aster, from which it was saved by the 
remarkable fighting qualities of its indi- 
vidual fractions, and above all by the in- 
competency of its foes. To go against a 
well organized, well handled, well led for- 
eign foe under such conditions would in- 
evitably have meant failure and humilia- 
tion. It will be impossible to get good 
results in war if the nation, through its 
representatives, has failed to make ade- 
quate provision for a proper Army and 



14 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

to provide for the reorganization of the 
Army and for its practice in time of 
peace.'* 

I was writing of my own party, and of 
what occurred under the Administration 
of which I was part. I then dechned to 
suppress or alter the truth; and those 
critics of mine are indeed foohsh who be- 
lieve that I can be frightened into at this 
time refusing to speak that minimum por- 
tion of the truth which it is imperative on 
behalf of the nation now to set forth. 

In my Autobiography I christened my 
chapter on the Spanish war, "The War 
of America The Unready." Writing in 
1913, I said: 

"There is no more utterly useless and 
even utterly mischievous citizen, than the 
peace-at-any-price, universal arbitration 
type of being, who is always complaining, 
either about war or else about the cost of 
the armaments which act as the insurance 
against war. In the present stage of civ- 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 15 

ilization a proper armament is the surest 
guarantee of peace and is the only guar- 
antee that war, if it does come, will not 
mean irreparable and overwhelming dis- 
aster. The huckster or pawn-broker type 
is usually physically timid and likes to 
cover an unworthy fear of the most just 
war under high sounding names. The 
large mollycoddle vote . . . consists of the 
people who are soft physically and mor- 
ally or who have a twist in them which 
makes them cantankerous and unpleasant 
as long as they can be so with safety to 
their bodies. In addition there are the 
good people with no imagination and no 
foresight who think war will not come, but 
that if it does come. Armies and Navies 
can be improvised. I abhor unjust war; 
I believe that war should never be resorted 
to when or so long as it is honorably pos- 
sible to avoid it. I advocate preparation 
for war in order to avert war, and I 
should never advocate war unless it were 
the only alternative to dishonor. I de- 
scribe the folly of which so many of our 
people were formerly guilty, in order that 
we may in our own day be on our guard 
against similar folly." 



16 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

I call especial attention to the last sen- 
tence. I was speaking of the Administra- 
tion and of the party organization in which 
I had held a position of some prominence. 
My motives in so speaking were precisely 
the same as my motives in describing the 
folly of which we have been guilty during 
the last three years and a quarter. I wish 
that any persons who believe that I have 
in any fundamental way changed my atti- 
tude would read the final chapter in my 
Autobiography, "The Peace of Right- 
eousness." Every position I have taken 
during the past three and one quarter 
years is foreshadowed, often in absolute 
detail, by what I said in that chapter. 

As President I, many scores of times, 
took precisely the position I now take. 
I quote almost at random. In 1901, in 
my message to Congress, I said: 

"We desire the peace which comes as 
of right to the just man armed, not the 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 17 

peace granted on terms of ignominy, to 
the craven and the weakling. It is not 
possible to improvise [military force] 
after v^ar breaks out. If wt fail to show 
forethought and preparation now, there 
may come a time when disaster will befall 
us instead of triumph. There is no surer 
way of courting national disaster than to 
be opulent, aggressive and unarmed. 
Only by actual handling and providing 
for men in masses while they are march- 
ing, camping, embarking and disembark- 
ing will it be possible to train the higher 
officers to perform their duties well and 
smoothly. It is utterly impossible in the 
excitement and haste of impending war 
[to work] satisfactorily if the arrange- 
ments have not been made long before- 
hand." 

In December 1905, in my message to 
Congress, I said: 

"We can do nothing of permanent 
value for peace unless we keep ever clearly 
in mind the ethical element which lies at 
the root of the problem. Our aim is right- 
eousness. When peace and righteousness 



18 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

conflict then a great and upright people 
can never for a moment hesitate to follow 
the path which leads toward righteous- 
ness, even though that path also leads 
toward war. We have scant sympathy 
with the sentimentalist who dreads oppres- 
sion less than physical suffering, and who 
would prefer a shameful peace to the pain 
and toil sometimes lamentably necessary 
in order to secure a righteous peace. As 
the world is now, only that nation is 
equipped for peace that knows how to 
fight and that will not shrink from fight- 
ing if ever the conditions become such that 
war is demanded in the name of the high- 
est morality. We cannot consider the 
question of our foreign policy without at 
the same time treating of the Army and 
Navy. Only by training in advance can 
we be sure that in actual war, field opera- 
tions and those at sea will be carried on 
successfully." 

I dwelt upon our duties about peace 
and war and the duty of preparedness 
again and again, in message after mes- 
sage. In my message to Congress in De- 
cember 1906, for example, I said: 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 19 

"A just war is in the long run far bet- 
ter for a nation's soul than the most pros- 
perous peace obtained by acquiescence in 
wrong or in injustice.'' 

Then in advocating preparedness I 
said: 

"It is earnestly to be wished that we 
would profit by the teaching of history in 
this matter. A strong and wise people 
will study its own failures no less than 
its triumphs, for there is wisdom to be 
learned from the study of both, of the 
mistake as well as of the success. For 
this purpose nothing can be more instruc- 
tive than a rational study of the War of 
1812. During the preceding twelve years 
our people refused to make any prep- 
arations whatever regarding the Army 
or the Navy. They saved a milUon or 
two of dollars by so doing, and in mere 
money paid a hundredfold for each mil- 
lion they thus saved during a war which 
brought untold suffering and which re- 
sulted merely in what was, in effect, a 
drawn battle. The little Republic of 
Switzerland sets us an excellent example 



20 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

in all matters connected with building up 
an efficient citizen soldiery." 

I was not then acquainted with the term 
"universal obligatory military training"; 
hardly any American was ; but I knew of 
the thing, although not the term; and I 
held up Switzerland as a model to us, in 
pursuance of the doctrine I was preach- 
ing, that no freeman had a right to live in 
a free nation if he would not bear arms, 
and therefore train himself to bear arms 
efficiently, in the nation's service. 

In my message to Congress of Decem- 
ber 1907, I said: 

"Again and again we have suffered be- 
cause there has not been sufficient prep- 
aration in advance for possible war. As 
a nation we have always been short- 
sighted in providing for the efficiency of 
the Army in time of peace. Declamation 
against militarism has no more serious 
place in an earnest and intelligent move- 
ment for righteousness in this country 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 21 

than declamation against the worship of 
Baal or Ashteroth. The result of war if 
the combatants are otherwsie equally- 
matched will depend chiefly upon which 
Power has prepared best in time of peace. 
It is folly for this nation to base any hope 
of securing peace on any international 
agreement as to the limitation of arma- 
ments. We should this year provide for 
four battleships. Moreover, the only way 
to find out our actual needs is to perform 
in time of peace the maneuvers necessary 
in time of war. After war is declared 
it is too late to find out the needs. [Such 
delay] means to invite disaster." 

In a special message to Congress the 
following April I, again, urged the build- 
ing of four battleships a year. I con- 
tinued: 

"It is mischievous folly for any states- 
man to assume that this world has yet 
reached the stage when a proud nation, 
jealous of its honor, can be content to rely 
for peace upon the forbearance of other 
Powers. Events still fresh in the mind 



22 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

of every thinking man show that neither 
arbitration, nor any other device, can as 
yet be invoked to prevent the gravest and 
most terrible wrongdoing to peoples who 
are either few in numbers or who, if nu- 
merous, have lost the first and most im- 
portant of national virtues, the capacity 
for self defence." 

Witness Belgium and China today! 

In another message I stated that it 
would "be criminal to fail to prepare," 
and in yet another I said: 

"The conduct of the Spanish War 
showed the lamentable loss of life, the 
useless extravagance and the inefficiency 
certain to result if during peace the high 
officers of the War and Navy Depart- 
ments are praised and rewarded only [for 
matters against the efficiency of the serv- 
ice]. Money should be appropriated to 
permit troops to be massed in bodies and 
exercised in maneuvers, particularly in 
marching. [I then recommended in- 
creases and other measures.] Neglect to 
provide for all of this means to incur the 
risk of future disaster and disgrace." 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 23 

In all these matters I went much fur- 
ther than I could get the Congress to 
back me up. What I asked for as regards 
the Navy was proper. As regards the 
Army, I did not ask for nearly enough, 
although I went much further than either 
Congress, or the people behind Congress, 
were then willing to go. I asked for much 
more than I got! And it is only just to 
say that I did get a large response both 
from Congress and the people, so that by 
the end of my term the Army had much 
improved in efficiency, and the Navy had 
been doubled in size and at least quad- 
rupled in efficiency — at the time when the 
battle fleet steamed around the world we 
were easily the second naval power of the 
world. I felt that I was by my office a 
leader, that it was the duty of a leader to 
lead, and that above all it was his duty to 
lead in the right direction. 

If you doubt the need of calling at- 



M NATIONAL STRENGTH 

tention to grave shortcomings, let me 
ask your attention to what, on this very 
day when I am addressing you, has been 
said by the Secretaries of War and the 
Navy, the President's mouthpieces and 
ofBcial representatives in dealing with the 
entire military policy of the nation, the 
most vitally important of all our activities 
at this time. The two secretaries, as re- 
ported in the New York Tribune, and in 
an editorial in the New York Times, have 
just denied that there is any shortage in 
warm clothing among our troops and sail- 
ors, and Mr. Daniels has deprecated 
the action of the private individuals who, 
separately or associated together, in this 
essential matter are endeavoring to make 
good the Government's shortcomings by 
providing for our troops and sailors the 
warm clothing necessary not only to their 
comfort but to their health and efficiency 
as fighting men. Such denials represent 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 25 

ignorance pushed to the point of fatuity. 
They come perilously near representing a 
wilful and most culpable failure in the 
performance of one of the most important 
governmental duties at the present mo- 
ment. 

At the very time that this statement 
appeared in the press, there also appeared 
in the press an appeal from our official 
Red Cross representatives in Paris for a 
million and a half more sweaters. At that 
very time all of us who were acquainted 
with what was happening in at least cer- 
tain of the training camps knew of wide- 
spread discomfort, often rising to suffer- 
ing, and sometimes to disease and death, 
due to the failure to provide the raw re- 
cruits with the warm clothing essential to 
health when bitter weather has begun. 
Scores of officers have written me, or 
spoken to me, requesting aid in getting 
overcoats, blankets, jerseys, warm under- 



26 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

clothes or heavy socks for their men. 
Scores of men, or relatives of men, have 
written me asking if I could not do some- 
thing to remedy the conditions — which I 
was helpless to remedy. On the morning 
of the day of my speech I received one 
letter reading as follows: 

"I am in trouble and appeal to you. 
Enclosed are extracts from my son's let- 
ter. He is not a weakling. When only 
15 years of age he was driving a six-horse 
team over some of the worst mountain 
roads in Idaho. He is a manly man. This 
letter shows him more concerned for his 
fellows than himself." 

The extract from the letter read: 

"Camp So-and-So, Nov. 8, 1917.— The 
weather has moderated some and we do 
not suffer so .much from the cold. We 
have no heat in the barracks yet and very 
few clothes. But for myself I am getting 
along OK. It is hard on some of the fel- 
lows who are sick. The worst of it is we 
cannot get medical treatment. They have 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 27 

nothing but salts, camly [sic] pills and 
iodine at the infirmary. So if a man gets 
sick he is up against it. They are having 
quite a bit of trouble with contagious dis- 
eases such as scarlet fever, measles and 
spinal meningitis." 

A captain from this same camp has just 
told me that he had one fifth as many over- 
coats as he had men, and had to use them 
turn and turn about for the men on guard 
duty; that he had been able to get thick 
drawers for the men, but only summer 
undershirts. A Major-Quartermaster 
from another camp has just told me that 
he has at last got plenty of overcoats, but 
that most of the men still have only cotton 
uniforms, summer underclothing and light 
socks. I could multiply these instances 
indefinitely; they are not exceptional; 
they stand for the average conditions in 
at least certain camps. They have been 
the conditions for nearly three months. 



28 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

The able officers in the camps are now 
correcting them; and they would have 
been corrected far more quickly if there 
had been outspoken criticism of them/ 

Now, if those responsible for these con- 
ditions had the manliness frankly to ac- 
knowledge them, to admit that they, our 
governmental leaders, had made a capital 
mistake in the failure to prepare in ad- 
vance which is chiefly responsible for such 
conditions, and if with entire disregard of 
both partisanship and spite our leaders had 
endeavored to remedy such conditions, I 
should say not one word about them. I 
should confine myself to helping remedy 

1 A striking example of the good effects of criticism 
has just been given by the announcements of the Secre- 
taries of War and the Navy in the papers of day before 
yesterday to the effect that they now welcome the giving 
to our soldiers and sailors of warm clothing. Ten days 
ago, as above recited, they by their public announce- 
ments endeavored to discourage all persons from giving 
such needed clothing to our men (and the Secretary of 
the Navy, because of a personal quarrel with the Navy 
League, has refused to let that organization help our 
sailors in this fashion). The criticism of this action 
has borne healthy fruit. — Thanksgiving Day 1917. 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 29 

them. But when the conditions are de- 
nied, when those responsible for them 
punish General Wood for having done his 
high duty in exposing and trying to rem- 
edy them, and when these same responsi- 
ble officials refuse to introduce as our per- 
manent governmental policy the only pol- 
icy which will prevent the recurrence of 
these conditions on some occasion when 
they may bring national ruin, it is un- 
worthy of a patriotic man to keep silent. 
I believe that we have the finest kind of 
material in the men, the officers and en- 
listed men, regulars, volunteers and 
drafted men alike, who are now gathered 
in the various training camps. No man 
can visit these camps, and see these men, 
without feeling his heart swell with pride 
as an American. I believe that within a 
year or so of our entry into the war these 
men will in spite of all the handicaps have 
developed into an admirable and f ormida- 



30 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

ble army of fighting soldiers. What I 
wish with all my might to emphasize is 
that our present experience proves that, 
in spite of having such excellent natural 
material, our unpreparedness when we en- 
tered the war was so shamefully complete 
that for a year thereafter we would have 
been absolutely at the mercy of any for- 
midable opponent, if our Allies had not 
protected us. I recite the facts in the case 
only with the hope, the eager hope, that 
we may take the lesson to heart and so 
prepare ourselves that never again shall 
we repeat our folly. 

So much for what is really only pre- 
hminary to my lecture itself. Now for 
what I have to say to you students, and 
therefore to all the other men like you in 
our nation. 

If we cannot look to our college trained 
men for leadership in our national life, 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 31 

then there is something radically wrong 
either in the colleges or in the national 
life. I am not willing to admit that either 
is the case. Therefore, I confidently ap- 
peal to the college men of the United 
States for practical translation into pol- 
icy of what in books of advanced theology 
would be called a proper national ethic 
and a proper world-ethic. In other words, 
I ask the men to whom special cultural 
opportunities have been granted both to 
teach our people that no nation can help 
others imless it can defend itself by its 
own prepared strength, and also to teach 
them that this strength, the only safe 
foundation for national greatness, must 
in international matters be used with high 
regard for the rights of others. 

This is only applying to the nation, in 
its relation to the world at large, the rule 
of conduct applicable to the individual 
within the nation in his relations to other 



32 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

individuals. The man who does not so 
consult his own interest and the interest 
of those closest to him as to strive for per- 
sonal success and achievement is but a 
poor creature; but if he considers only 
personal achievement and success, with- 
out regard to honesty and to respect for 
the rights of others, he becomes a noxious 
jungle beast in the body politic. So it 
is with nations. China became a source 
of danger to the peace of the world be- 
cause it let military inefficiency degen- 
erate into utter military ineptitude. Ger- 
many became a worse danger to the peace 
of the world because it developed the wor- 
ship of efficiency unbalanced by morality 
into a monstrous latter-day Moloch-cult. 
Moreover, Germany, at the same time 
that she reverted to a world-ethic sub- 
stantially similar to that of Attila, Gen- 
ghis Khan and Tamerlane, also made 
every advance in modern material civiliza- 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 33 

tion an efficient aid in the application of 
this hideous world-ethic. 

Of course, the vital thing for the nation 
no less than the individual to remember 
is that, while dreaming and talking both 
have their uses, these uses must chiefly 
exist in seeing the dream realized and the 
talk turned into action. It is well that 
there should be some ideals so high as 
never to be wholly possible of realization; 
but unless there is a sincere effort meas- 
ureably to realize them, ghttering talk 
about them represents merely a kind of 
self-indulgence which ultimately means 
atrophy of will power. Ideals that are so 
lofty as always to be unrealizeable, have 
a place, sometimes an exceedingly impor- 
tant place, in the history of mankind, if 
the attempt partially to reahze them is 
made ; but in the long run what most helps 
forward the common run of himianity in 
this workaday world is the possession of 



34 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

realizeable ideals and the sincere attempt 
to realize them. 

For similar reasons mere closet theoriz- 
ing about the work of governing or better- 
ing men is only rarely of any use, and is 
never of as much use as a working hy- 
pothesis that is being translated into prac- 
tice. It is not mere documentation, mere 
historical or philosophical research, but 
experimentation, the service test, the test 
by trial and error, which counts most in 
the ceaseless struggle for the slow, partial, 
never very satisfactory, but never-to-be- 
abandoned uplift of our brother man and 
sister woman. Robespierre and the other 
leaders who turned the French revolution 
from a beneficent movement against one 
kind of tyrannous injustice into a horrible 
crusade on behalf of another and even 
bloodier type of tyrannous injustice, ut- 
tered far loftier sentiments, and an- 
nounced their devotion to far more glit- 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 35 

tering ideals for all mankind, than Wash- 
ington and Lincoln ever uttered or an- 
nounced. But Washington and Lincoln 
never used lofty words to cloak base ac- 
tions, never used spangled rhetoric with- 
out serious intention to turn it into deeds, 
never with oratorical insincerity promised 
what could not be performed, never de- 
liberately pledged themselves to one course 
of policy and then cynically reversed 
themselves when it suited their self-inter- 
est ; and with steady sincerity they carried 
one consistent purpose to realization in 
the actual facts of life. Therefore Wash- 
ington and Lincoln stand at the opposite 
pole from Robespierre, Danton, Hebert, 
Marat and their fellow malefactors. 

Now, all of these general statements 
and historical illustrations will probably 
command the assent of most men of aver- 
age common sense. I do not expect them 
to be approved by the persons whose com- 



36 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

plete refusal to profit by experience, or 
whose slightly erratic brain development, 
or whose timidity, make them prefer per- 
manently to dwell in a world of shadows 
rather than of realities. But most men 
and women of common sense will not 
merely agree with them; they will think 
them too obvious to need elaboration. So 
they are. But they are by no means too 
obvious at this moment in so far as re- 
ducing them to action is concerned! What 
we now need — probably what we genera- 
ally need — in our national life is the re- 
duction to concrete action of that which 
in the abstract we accept as obvious. The 
difficulty lies not in securing assent to 
wisdom as an abstract proposition, but in 
making men go through the hard, stum- 
bling, painful effort to reduce it to prac- 
tice. 

Therefore, I ask our people, and espe- 
cially I ask our yoimg men who have been 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 37 

given the boon of university training, to 
apply these statements to our national 
conduct during the last three and a half 
years; to judge our conduct at the pres- 
ent time by the general principles to which 
we cordially assent as abstract proposi- 
tions; and then, what is the really impor- 
tant thing, to take steps now, at once, in 
order that for the future our conduct shall 
square with the principles which we now 
see should have been applied in the past. 
In putting before ourselves what we, 
through our Governmental representa- 
tives, have done in the past our thought 
should be only for the future. We recall 
what is evil in the past, not in order to 
reproach anyone, but to make sure that 
it does not recur in the future. After his 
second election as President, Abraham 
Lincoln said to a body of men who had 
come to congratulate him: "Human na- 
ture will not change. In any future great 



38 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

national trial, compared with the men of 
this, we shall have as weak and as strong, 
as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. 
Let us therefore study the incidents of 
this as philosophy to learn wisdom from 
and none of them as wrongs to be 
avenged," This is the attitude for us to 
take now. Whether the acts which have 
caused the harm were due to silliness or 
to some even more evil quality, is of no 
consequence; we do not wish to consider 
them as anything to be avenged. But we 
shall ourselves show both silliness and lack 
of patriotism if we do not learn wisdom 
from our own shortcomings in the past; 
and we cannot learn wisdom imless we 
clearly understand just what these short- 
comings were, and just what our present 
position is. It is, of course, entirely true 
that the faults which are past cannot be 
repaired, and therefore, so far as this ob- 
ject is concerned, need not be discussed; 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 39 

but when there is imminent danger of our 
repeating in the future, when as a matter 
of fact we are now repeating in the pres- 
ent, these identical faults, it is imperative 
clearly to realize them, in order to avoid 
continuance in their conmiission. We do 
not wish to cry over spilt milk. But most 
emphatically we need clearly to under- 
stand that it was spilt, and why it was 
spilt, so as in the future to avoid spilling 
it when the spilling will be utterly disas- 
trous. As a matter of fact we are still 
spilling it; and this primarily because we 
refuse to admit how much we have spilt 
in the past. 

Do you say that there is no need of 
learning the lesson? If this is your 
thought, read the daily papers, and study 
the utterances of our governmental lead- 
ers. We have boasted intolerably; we 
have boasted so much over what we are 
doing, and over what we intend to do. 



40 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

that we actually tend to forget the one 
outstanding fact, which is that as yet we 
have actually done almost nothing. 

Remember clearly that the war began 
just as soon as the Germans sent their 
submarine note of January 31st last, 
which we answered by breaking off diplo- 
matic relations on February 3rd. Con- 
gress did not declare war in April; it an- 
nounced that war already existed. And 
Congress was right. We were exactly as 
much at war during the two months pre- 
ceding the action of Congress as during 
the two months succeeding thereto. If it 
was inexcusable not to prepare with all 
possible speed and efficiency after the 
action in April, it was equally inexcusable 
not so to prepare immediately after Jan- 
uary 31st. The situation had not changed 
in the smallest degree during the interval. 
It is now mid November. We are getting 
towards the close of the tenth month since 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 41 

Germany has been at war with us (I am 
using the language of Congress). What 
have we done during these ten months and 
how far have our words concealed from 
ourselves — but from no one else — ^how lit- 
tle we have done? 

Let us consider the last question first. 
Early in October the Secretary of War 
issued a couple of statements about the 
work of the War Department. In one 
statement he said, as authoritatively 
quoted in the press: "We are well on 
the way to the battle front. At the end 
of another six months^ it is safe to pre- 
dict, the United States will show a record 
of preparedness and achievement that will 
challenge the world's admiration." The 
friendly newspaper giving this statement 
put in as a headline — "U. S. Will Startle 
World with Work for War, Says Baker" ; 
and followed the Secretary's statement 
with this comment, "From a nation of 



42 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

peace and unpreparedness the country in 
six [by rights eight] months has devel- 
oped into a powerful fighting machine — 
the greatest factor in the war. Congress 
has completed a program which for mag- 
nitude and money has no equal in the his- 
tory of the world's parliaments. . . . On 
April 6th, the day President Wilson 
signed the declaration of war, the Amer- 
ican army was small and unsupplied. The 
Navy was not fully manned. America's 
merchant marine was a joke among na- 
tions. The army had less than a dozen 
aeroplanes." On the previous day the 
Secretary of War had authorized the 
statement that "20,000 airplanes are be- 
ing built for the army," that the country 
has an "unlimited supply of young men 
who are being trained for aviators," and 
that "within a reasonable time, consider- 
ing the period for preparation, this coun- 
try will send its first airplane to Europe." 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 43 

The newspaper in which I saw this state- 
ment summarized it by saying that the 
Secretary had annomiced that "all these 
20,000 airplanes will be completed, with 
thousands of trained aviators at hand, 
when Pershing moves to the front." 
About the same time the oriental investi- 
gator and expert of one great paper an- 
nounced that in view of our having now 
become a great military nation Japan was 
hereafter a negligible factor in military 
affairs and we should forthwith insist on 
the open door in Manchuria! 

These utterances are not exceptional. 
They are typical. Those which are official 
are the statements made during a space 
of two or three days by the gentleman who 
in war matters speaks for and represents 
and is responsible for the Administration. 
The others are the statements of influen- 
tial newspapers which in good faith ac- 
cepted what was thus said and built their 



44 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

theories upon it. In their turn the read- 
ers of the newspapers accept both sets of 
statements; and relatively well-informed 
men hesitate to tell the truth because good 
foolish people feel now, as good foolish 
people have always felt, that an agreeable 
lie is better than a disagreeable truth. 

Nothing works graver damage to a na- 
tion, especially in war time, than either 
dishonest readiness imtruthfuUy to criti- 
cise what is right or timid reluctance 
truthfully to criticise what is wrong. In 
this war the worst and most unpatriotic 
action has been that of the men who have 
said that we had no special grievance 
against Germany and therefore no cause 
of war with Germany (if the sinking of 
the Lusitania was no special grievance to 
this nation then the rape of a woman is 
no special grievance to the men who are 
her close kin) ; the persons who have op- 
posed efficient methods of carrying on the 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 45 

war; the men who try to escape or help 
others to escape from rendering military- 
service ; and the men who clamor for peace 
without victory — for an inconclusive 
peace, which would leave Germany un- 
punished for her hideous wrongdoing and 
her vassal states, Austria, Bulgaria and 
Turkey, still able to oppress the national- 
ities over which they tyrannize. But sec- 
ond only to these men in the damage they 
cause, come those other men who deny or 
seek to cover up the fact that we have been 
guilty not merely of folly, but of the grav- 
est moral dereliction, in failing to begin 
to prepare as soon as the great war broke 
out, that this failure on our part has 
caused irreparable loss and damage, and 
that since we entered the war, while we 
have done some things well, we have done 
some things very badly. 

In the statements above quoted con- 
sider first those made officially by the 



46 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

Secretary of War on behalf of the Ad- 
ministration. They deal in part with 
what has been done, and in part with 
prophecy as to what we are going to do. 
Speaking of what has been done the Sec- 
retary of War says "we are well on the 
way to the battle front." The accuracy 
of this statement depends upon the stand- 
ard of speed and accomplishment which 
we employ in judging such a phrase as 
"well on the way." After ten months we 
have failed to reach the battle front, ex- 
cept with one division, which we are in- 
formed is in the trenches chiefly for the 
purpose of instruction; and this means 
that we have gone towards the front at 
a snail's pace compared to what every 
other big nation in the world except China 
has done and is doing. 

We can, if it is any satisfaction, com- 
pare ourselves with China. But no other 
big modem nation for over a hundred 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 47 

years has been forced after ten months 
of war to say only that it was "well on 
the way to the front." For comparison 
with this kind of military activity we must 
go back to the days of Tiglath Pileser, 
Nebuchhadnezzar, and Pharaoh Necho. 
For the Assyrians and Egyptians of that 
period ten months was perhaps not an ex- 
cessive time in which to begin to prepare 
to get "well on the way to the front." But 
it is excessive, and more than excessive, 
for any nation that realizes that we are 
living in the days of the successors of 
Moltke. The United States should adopt 
the standards of speed in war which be- 
long to the 20th Century A. D. ; we should 
not be content with, still less boast about, 
standards which were obsolete in the Sev- 
enth Century B. C. 

The prophecy following this statement 
of achievement is : "At the end of another 
six months, it is safe to predict, the United 



48 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

States will show a record of preparedness 
and achievement that will challenge the 
world's admiration." 

Perhaps! It depends somewhat upon 
what the world feels like admiring. But 
instead of an uneasy hungering to secure 
the world's admiration without earning it, 
would it not be well first, without boasting 
as to what we will do in the future, so to 
act in the present as to make safe our own 
self-respect and develop our own assured 
power of self-reliance, and let the world's 
admiration take care of itself? It may 
possibly be true — although I doubt it — 
that Brag is a good dog; but Holdfast is 
a better. 

As regards airplanes, the Secretary of 
War announces that we are now prepar- 
ing 20,000 airplanes and an unhmited 
supply of aviators. But as regards im- 
mediate action he makes only the cautious 
statement that "within a reasonable time. 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 49 

considering the period of preparation, this 
country will send its first airplane to 
Europe.'* In other words, the 20,000 air- 
planes with their skilled aviators, trained 
in shooting and bomb throwing, are still 
in the distance; but our concrete hope is 
only that reasonably soon we shall get 
one airplane to Europe. I gladly admit 
that this is pretty good "considering the 
period for preparation." This last is the 
essence of the matter. General Squier 
and his military and civiHan associates, 
backed by the big business men engaged 
in motor construction and the hke, have 
done admirably ; we have as a nation every 
reason to be proud of their energy, ad- 
ministrative skill and inventive capacity. 
What has been done in the difficult work 
of airplane construction has been capital. 
But the praise must be limited by the 
phrase "considering the period for prep- 
aration." The men who have done the 



50 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

job are not responsible for having been 
forced to begin two years and three quar- 
ters after they ought to have begun. But 
we as a people, through om* high govern- 
mental authorities, have no right to excuse 
ourselves for the almost inconceivable de- 
lay in beginning by apologetically "con- 
sidering the period for preparation." It 
is purely our fault that the men who are 
doing the job have had to take into ac- 
count such a "consideration." 

We must also remember that while we 
are still only beginning to build the 
twenty thousand airplanes, and beginning 
to train the future twenty thousand avia- 
tors to fly, we have not yet even begun to 
train the few hundred aviators we already 
have, to fight. After the best type of air- 
plane has been produced in vast numbers, 
and after the tens of thousands of men 
necessary have been trained to handle 
them in the air, it will still be necessary 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 51 

to train them how to do the actual shoot- 
ing against the war-hawks on the other 
side, and the actual bombing at the same 
time that they dodge the anti-aircraft 
guns of the enemy. We have waited to 
learn all this and to do all this until war 
actually came, although for over two 
years and a half we were vouchsafed such 
warning as no other nation in recent times 
has had in advance of war. We are now 
able to do all this, we now have the neces- 
sary year or eighteen months in which to 
build machines and train men, only be- 
cause the weary and war worn allies, to 
whose help we have nominally come, deem 
it worth while, for their own sakes, to pro- 
tect us with their fleets and armies, with 
the bodies of their bravest and the brains 
of their wisest, while we at last do what 
it was unpardonable for us not to have 
done long in advance. 

Why cry over spilt milk you say? Be- 



52 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

cause now is the time to provide that it 
shall not be spilt in the future; and we 
never shall so provide if we complacently 
ignore the fact that it has been spilt in 
the past. Remember that we have not 
yet taken one step to make preparedness 
our permanent pohcy. On the contrary, 
our leaders vaguely hold out the hope that 
we can avoid such a policy by devising 
some patent fake pohcy of permanent 
pacifism after the war. To rely on any 
policy of pacifism as a substitute for (in- 
stead of, as I would gladly admit it to 
be, an addition and supplement to) the 
policy of training and preparing in ad- 
vance our national strength, would be 
criminal. And the only sure way of avert- 
ing the introduction of a foolish pacifist 
policy is by profiting by the humihating 
experience through which we are now go- 
ing, and introducing now, immediately, 
the policy of real preparedness as a per- 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 53 

manent feature of our governmental ac- 
tion. 

So much for the governmental an- 
nouncements. Now for the newspaper 
statements based on these governmental 
announcements. Remember that these 
newspaper statements come from high 
grade, reputable papers, sincerely bent 
on telling the truth; but apparently 
completely misled as to the real facts, 
and apparently not in a position to 
understand what time means in prepara- 
tion for modern warfare. One state- 
ment is that "the coimtry has developed 
into a powerful fighting machine — ^the 
greatest factor in the war." This is a 
translation of rose-tinted prophecy into 
exactly what it is not — the sobriety of ac- 
complished fact. We have not developed 
into a "powerful fighting machine." On 
the contrary, after nearly ten months we 
are such a weak fighting machine that we 



54 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

have not yet put men, guns or airplanes 
on the permanent fighting line. To speak 
of a "powerful fighting machine" which 
after ten months isn't ready to do any 
fighting, is a ludicrous contradiction in 
terms. 

It is even more ludicrous — and humili- 
ating — ^to speak of our being "the greatest 
factor in the war." Why, the German 
authorities regarded us, and still regard 
us, with such contempt that they counted 
our entire warlike might as of less conse- 
quence than the liberty to go on with their 
U-boat warfare. As yet, either France 
or England is a tenfold — a hundredfold — 
greater factor in the war than the United 
States. Von Tirpitz has just said that 
"from a mihtary standpoint America's 
entrance into the war is of little signifi- 
cance." And boasts do not aid us. They 
are hurtful to our self-respect. They tend 
to do positive damage by encouraging a 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 55 

silly complacency. Consider the headline 
above quoted: "The United States will 
startle world with work for war." This 
may, or may not, prove true in the future ; 
at present so much of the world as 
is represented by Von Tirpitz and 
Von Hindenburg has certainly not been 
startled to edification or admiration by 
our leisurely "work for war." And it is 
on the basis of this imaginary achievement 
that one facile adviser proposes that we 
shall embark on a career of pointless inter- 
ference in Manchuria — as an addition to 
the war in which we are already engaged, 
and to the simmering trouble in Mexico, 
so full of future menace. 

But there were certain of these news- 
paper statements which were absolutely 
true, although the full significance of their 
truth had escaped the writers. It is abso- 
lutely true that Congress, with wise gen- 
erosity in endeavoring to help the Admin- 



56 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

istration atone for our appalling blunder 
in failing to prepare in advance, has ap- 
propriated money in huge sums, vaster 
than ever before appropriated by any 
legislature in the world. It is also lament- 
ably true that on April 6th, when we at 
last formally admitted the obvious truth 
that we were already at war (and when 
we had been for two years and eight 
months constantly warned as hardly an- 
other nation in history has ever been 
warned), the navy was not fully manned, 
the army was small and unsupplied, there 
were less than a dozen military airplanes 
(which incidentally were worthless for 
military purposes) and the American 
merchant marine was a joke among na- 
tions. 

All this is absolutely true. But is it a 
subject of congratulation? The money 
appropriated represents at least twice — 
it is alleged to be three times — what Eng- 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 67 

land has spent in any year of the war. It 
is certainly twice what would have been 
necessary to spend if we had started to 
get ready in time. In such case there 
would have been no need for the frantic 
hurry and reckless prodigahty which our 
culpable refusal to exercise forethought 
has rendered necessary. From the mere 
standpoint of economy, even aside from 
the more important standpoint of trained 
efficiency, we have already paid an over- 
whelming money price for our almost in- 
conceivable blindness in the face of the 
lesson which for over three years has been 
written in letters of blood and flame across 
the whole world-horizon. 

We have not yet paid that price in 
blood; and the reason is that our allies 
have paid it for us. For their own sakes 
our people should clearly understand how 
great our failure in duty has been, how 
completely we owe our salvation to others, 



58 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

and how little we have a right to hope 
ever again to escape scatheless unless we 
learn wisdom and prepare so that never 
again shall there be such failure. It is a 
continuing failure. We are not yet doing 
our duty. This is of course largely due to 
the fact that it is impossible after three 
years indulgence in folly not to continue 
to pay for that folly. But it is in part 
also due to the fact that our refusal fear- 
lessly to admit and condemn the folly of 
the past has fearfully handicapped us in 
the effort to avoid the commission of folly 
in the present. 

The men who clamored against pre- 
paredness before the war played Ger- 
many's game, and wrought irreparable 
evil to this country and to mankind; for 
if we had prepared our strength in ad- 
vance, and had acted with instant effi- 
ciency when our own wrongs became in- 
tolerable, Russia would not have broken. 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 69 

nor Italy have met disaster, and the peace 
of victory would have come to us long ago 
— perhaps even without our having had 
to fight at all. The heads of organiza- 
tions such as the German- American Alli- 
ances which acted frankly in the inter- 
est of Germany were no worse foes 
than the various organizations of pro- 
fessional pacifists and the like, so far as 
preparedness was concerned. The agents 
of the German Government used all 
these bodies of people, just as they 
used the socialists and the I. W. W. 
These allies and agents of Germany now 
oppose sending our troops abroad, oppose 
the Liberty loans, and denoimce every ac- 
tion taken by the Government against our 
domestic traitors. These men are against 
the government when it does right. They 
are worse, but they are only one degree 
worse, than the sheep-like creatures — 
often misled by very sinister creatures — 



60 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

who bleat the ignoble doctrine that we 
must "stand behind" the government, with 
blinded eyes, even when it does wrong. 
The men who take the latter attitude, 
however feebly good their intentions, are 
as a matter of fact largely responsible for 
what we as a people have done that was 
bad ; for by their tame acquiescence in evil 
actions and evil policies and by their an- 
tagonism to their more fearless fellow citi- 
zens who honestly tell the truth, they have 
put a premium on inefficiency, and on even 
gra,ver shortcomings. Every American 
worth his salt should in every way aid the 
Government in every measure to wage the 
war efficiently, and to get our whole 
weight into the war with the utmost speed ; 
and he should also make it clear that he 
will not tolerate or condone delay, ineffi- 
ciency, irresolution or failure in single- 
minded patriotism. 

For two years and a half we failed in 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 61 

any way to prepare for the tremendous 
war which — as should have been obvious 
to even the most frivolous and timid — 
might at any moment suck us into the 
maelstrom. We made no effort even to 
do such an elementary thing as to run the 
Government rifle factories full speed. We 
passed a vicious law which impaired the 
efficiency of the national guard — a volun- 
teer organization — and interfered with the 
development of other efficient volunteer 
organizations. We treated the proper or- 
ganization of the War and Navy Depart- 
ments, from the heads down, as a matter 
not merely for indifference but for levity. 
We turned not merely the other cheek but 
our whole person to the bi*utal German 
aggressor, and showed such fear of stand- 
ing up either for our own rights or for 
the rights of small well-behaved nations, 
that we put a premium on increasing bru- 
tality of aggression. 



62 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

Then on January 31st last Germany 
notified us that she would conduct her sub- 
marine warfare with absolute ruthlessness 
— in other words, that she spumed our 
warning because she felt utter contempt 
for our soft and unready strength, that 
she was convinced of the efficacy of the 
policy of schrechlichkeit, that she re- 
garded the damage she could do her en- 
emies by U-boat warfare as outweighing 
any possible effect of the hostility of the 
United States. 

When we went into the war General 
Von Hindenburg was reported in the 
public press as saying that he saw no need 
for Germany to fear anything America 
might do for eighteen months. We 
scoffed at the statement. But nearly ten 
months have gone by, and most certainly 
we have as yet given Germany scant cause 
for fear. The country was utterly unpre- 
pared for war; the War Department was 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 63 

utterly unprepared for war; and the 
army, taken as a whole, was badly pre- 
pared for war. Perhaps in no way was 
our spiritual unpreparedness more clearly 
shown than in our failure to comprehend 
the tremendous importance of time; and 
this although the last three years had 
shown again and again that time in mod- 
em war is a vital factor. Germany has 
counted on our delays. Germany was 
justified. We have certainly so far failed 
to show any appreciation of the fact that 
in modern war, and in preparation for 
modern war, time is more valuable than 
ever it was or is in business. 

Nearly ten months have passed. We 
have but one division fit to go into the 
trenches. During the century that elapsed 
between Waterloo and the invasion of 
Belgium the average war between great 
military powers lasted much less than this 
time. It is not a figurative or hyperbolic 



64 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

statement, it is the literal truth that dur- 
ing these ten months any one of the great 
military powers could have conquered us 
with but little more difficulty than was 
experienced in the conquest of Belgium, 
Servia or Roumania. We have owed our 
safety solely to the fact that for their own 
purposes it suited England and France 
to protect us behind the rampart of their 
gallant dead. Are the descendants of the 
Americans of the Revolution and the Civil 
War to be permanently content with such 
precarious and ignoble safety? 

Above all, are they much longer to sub- 
mit to the treacherous wrong done this 
Republic by the Hearsts and La Follettes 
who have directly or indirectly preached 
an evil hatred of those very Allies to 
whom we owe our safety? There is even 
a lower depth than that plumbed by 
the men who would sacrifice this country 
to their love of Germany; and this depth 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 65 

is plumbed by those who whether from 
sheer sinister maHce or from demagogic 
desire to pander to that maHce would sac- 
rifice this coimtry to their hatred of Eng- 
land. 

Late in the tenth month since Germany 
went to war with us we have near the 
front one division of infantry, entirely fit 
to fight. There are some regiments of 
engineers also fit for work on the fighting 
front. There are some regiments of ar- 
tillery which have learned their business 
with French guns, and which are doubt- 
less fit. We have some other divisions 
which are rapidly becoming fit. We have 
as yet no battle planes, and no airmen fit 
for battle work in the sense that the Ger- 
man, French and English war-hawks (in- 
cluding the Americans in the French air 
squadrons) are fit. After so many months 
of immense money expenditure and great, 
although often misdirected, effort, this 



66 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

nation of a hundred million people, the 
wealthiest in the world, which prides itself 
on its energy, has not yet produced an 
army, fit to meet the enemy, which is as 
large or as efficient as the small armies 
which the wrecked remnant of either 
Servia, Roumania or Belgium has in the 
field. Is this a satisfactory showing? 

When such is the actual lesson of the 
results of unpreparedness, are we still to 
admit that there is any patriotism, any 
genuine love of country, among the paci- 
fist creatures who now clamor against the 
war, or among the politicians who still re- 
fuse to introduce preparedness as our 
permanent military policy, and who still 
talk vaguely about future international 
agreements, which they assert will here- 
after save us from war by scraps of paper 
instead of by our own trained strength? 
Keep clearly in mind what our purpose is. 
I am not primarily concerned with the 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 67 

mistakes and shortcomings actually com- 
mitted by us during these ten months; I 
comment on these only when the effort is 
made to deny their existence. But I am 
vitally concerned with seeing us as a peo- 
ple learn aright the lesson of the far 
reaching evil caused by our complete 
failure to prepare during the two years 
and three quarters preceding April last. 
Every shortcoming of which we have been 
guilty, every avoidable disaster that has 
befallen or will befall us or our allies, is 
or will be due primarily to our failure to 
prepare in advance. Unless we clearly 
see and manfully acknowledge this fact 
we shall not learn a correct policy, and 
unless we alter our present policy, ruin 
will in the end surely be our children's 
portion. 

At home our army has been gathered 
together in great camps, which have for 
the most part been admirably constructed. 



68 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

The regulars and the volunteer regiments, 
consist three fourths — in many eases al- 
most entirely — of raw recruits. The 
drafted men, excellent material, whose 
spirit of fine patriotism is beyond praise, 
have been or are being gathered together; 
for weeks most of them either had no 
arms or only broomsticks; and now they 
have rifles, mostly obsolete Spanish- war 
rifles, in the proportion of about one 
rifle for every six or eight men finally 
to be gathered in each camp. There has 
been no target practice. Most of the guns 
in the artillery regiments are of wood. 
Many thousands — I am informed that in 
certain camps nearly all — of the men, in 
this cold weather, still have cotton uni- 
forms, or thin summer underclothes, or 
an insufficient number of overcoats. It 
is only by chance that we hear of what 
has gone wrong (the Germans are fully 
advised — it is only our people who are 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 69 

ignorant — and the men who shiver in thin 
cotton or drill with cordwood cannon are 
not ignorant). But the press has from 
time to time mentioned the fact that many 
of the cartridges turned out are defective ; 
that scores of millions of the primers have 
turned out to be worthless. 

It has been jauntily said that the short- 
age of rifles among the troops who are in 
training is of no consequence, that men 
can at first learn with broomsticks, and 
that the eight men allotted to each anti- 
quated rifle can drill, turn and turn about, 
with it. These statements are not in ac- 
cordance with the facts. Competent offi- 
cers, engaged in training troops of good 
capacity, know that each man should be 
given his rifle, and should be learning to 
keep it clean and to take pride in it, within 
a week. If the officer is very good, and 
the man also good, the rifle ought to be 
given the latter on the second or third 



70 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

day — or even on the first. The Platts- 
burg men were given their rifles after a 
couple of days. In 1898 the men of my 
regiment were given their rifles as soon 
as they arrived at camp. Colonel Leon- 
ard, Wood, now Major General Wood, 
who was in command of the regiment, pro- 
ceeded on the theory that every single 
thing should be done at the earliest possi- 
ble moment ; and that if anything whatever 
could be done at three o'clock and wasn't 
done until four o'clock, somebody was to 
be blamed and should be called to account. 
In consequence that regiment was armed, 
equipped, drilled, kept two weeks on 
transports and put through two victorious 
aggressive fights, in which it lost a third 
of its officers and a fifth of its men, within 
ninety days of the time the Colonel and 
Lieutenant Colonel received their com- 
missions. English and Canadian officers 
of high rank have told me that under in- 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 71 

tensive training they have been able to 
put thousands of men in the field within 
sixteen weeks. 

Probably our gravest shortcoming after 
Germany in effect declared war on us on 
January 3 1st last was our failure in- 
stantly and with all possible speed to be- 
gin the preparation of a giant fleet of 
cargo ships, at the same moment that we 
undertook the investigation of the U- 
boat problem. The German government 
accepted war with us rather than give 
up the indiscriminate submarine cam- 
paign of murder and destruction. In 
other words, it announced that in its view 
the vital feature of the war was the effort 
to destroy so much of the shipping of the 
world as would hamper the transport of 
men, food and munitions until England 
was brought to her knees. Germany knew 
the value of time. She began her cam- 
paign without one hour's delay. She 



n NATIONAL STRENGTH 

counted on our indecision, folly and timid- 
ity to make us delay. And she was right. 
It seems literally incredible that we should 
have let one hour pass after the receipt of 
Germany's challenge before bending our 
every effort towards the immediate large- 
scale production of swift cargo ships. Yet 
for three months nothing was done, and 
then three months were wasted by permit- 
ting a squabble in the interest of worthless 
wooden shipping — and of Germany! — to 
block all preparation. Six months were 
wasted in utter futility before any serious 
attempt was made to grapple with the 
gravest feature of the war situation; and 
this although for two years we had been 
intermittently threatening and blustering 
(and backing down) about this very mat- 
ter, and had finally gone to war about it ; 
so that by no human possibility could we 
have had clearer and more emphatic and 
more often reiterated warning. 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 73 

In a war in which it has been shown 
again and again that a difference of a 
week or two — ahnost of a day or two — in 
readiness may mark the difference be- 
tween overwhehning victory and measure- 
less disaster, we have acted as if months 
of hesitation and leism-ely discussion were 
of neghgible consequence. In some par- 
ticular bureaus there has been full realiza- 
tion of the vital importance of speed. But 
as a rule we have in practice adopted the 
view of a high official who recently spoke 
of a delay of two or three months, as a 
"perfectly endurable delay." Why, a sin- 
gle day's delay ought to be treated as un- 
endurable if we really mean to do our 
utmost. 

Our Allies get money from us and need 
more; they sadly need our aid; and they 
are bound to speak with the utmost polite- 
ness of all our shortcomings and failures. 
But let us make no mistake. It is only 



74 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

by so acting as to win our own self-respect 
that we can permanently win the respect 
of others, whether friends or foes ; and we 
jeopardize everything by inefficiency and 
procrastination, and by foolish reluctance 
to face the fact that there has been in- 
efficiency and procrastination. Fine words 
will not permanently cloak either ugly! 
deeds or the absence of deeds. Prodigal 
expenditure of money and large ship- 
ments of food will not atone for the fail- 
ure speedily to put great masses of trained 
fighting men on the battle front. Uncle 
Sam must show that he is a soldier and 
not a sutler. To do a thing six months 
after it should have been done may repre- 
sent complete failure, and cannot repre- 
sent complete success. Nine tenths of wis- 
dom is being wise in time. 

We have been able to prepare at all, 
we have been able to waste time in dis- 
cussion and hesitating and blundering. 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 75 

only because it was worth while for our 
allies to protect our unhardened, unready 
softness of bulk with their own hardened 
strength. But let us not prattle about 
"perfectly endurable delay" ! If our allies 
had not, for their own purposes, shielded 
us, our frightened citizens would now be 
doing the bidding of stern and brutal men 
in pickel-haubes. Our allies have pro- 
tected us; we have not paid in blood for 
our protection ; but the blood of our allies 
has paid for our safety. Every month of 
what was to us "perfectly endurable de- 
lay," has been paid for by them in the 
blood of a hundred thousand men. No 
man can tell how much our delay has cost. 
By beginning to act with energy on Feb- 
ruary 1st, the day after the German note 
arrived, we could have had hundreds of 
thousands of efficient fighting men at the 
front in August ; and in such event it may 
well be that Russia would have taken 



76 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

heart and would now be organized for 
self-respecting, orderly liberty and for 
victoiy, and that Italy (especially if we 
had done our clear duty by declaring war 
on Austria) would not have met with dis- 
aster. Of course, if we had obeyed the 
dictates of ordinary common sense, fore- 
sight and patriotism and had begun to 
prepare three years ago — in men, ma- 
chines and ships — we could have put a 
couple of milhon men into the field last 
April and the war would be over now; 
or rather it would in all probability have 
come to an end without further bloodshed 
the instant we decided to interfere, so that 
we would not actually have had to fight. 

The lesson of the vital need of pre- 
paredness in advance is the vital lesson 
for us to learn. I ask you to remember 
that I am trying to make us, the people 
as a whole, learn this lesson ; I wish us to 
learn from our own shortcomings ; I wish 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 77 

US to take home the lesson to ourselves, 
to the American people, and not to make 
believe that it should only be learned by 
our officials or by somebody else. I care 
not a rap for the politics of those who 
need to learn the lesson. The extracts 
from my speeches and writings above 
given show that I have preached this les- 
son just as freely when the individuals 
affected belonged to my own party as 
when they belonged to another party. 

Let our people learn aright the lesson 
taught by the last three years. We re- 
fused to prepare. We followed the fool- 
ish prophets of pacifism when with quaver- 
ing voices they told us that if we were 
only harmless enough nobody would hurt 
us, and that preparedness brought on war. 
We tried the experiment. We did not 
prepare. And we have the war. Unpre- 
paredness did not avert war. It merely 
rendered us helpless to do our part worth- 



78 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

ily during a period so long that if it had 
not been for our alhes we would have 
been conquered twice over. Preparedness 
generally, although not always, averts 
war. Unpreparedness always invites it, 
and usually ensures disaster. 

The other day the public press carried 
this statement: 

"Washington, October 5th. — Frank ad- 
mission by Senator James Hamilton 
Lewis that the United States was not 
prepared to meet the exigency of war 
when five months ago it found itself con- 
fronted with an actual state of hostilities 
was made on the floor of the Senate today 
in a speech in which the Illinoisan en- 
deavored to answer the recent Roosevelt 
charge that our preparedness was *broom- 
stick preparedness.' The Senator said: 

" * There may be something to be said 
in justification of the fact that we were 
not prepared to the extent that we should 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 79 

have been. It was because we were a 
people dedicated to peace. It was because 
the mothers of the land prayed that the 
nation should ever be consecrated to 
peace.' " 

This puts the case for unpreparedness 
in a nutshell ; and the commentary on this 
theory, upon which for two years and a 
half we acted, is furnished by what befell 
us at the end of those two and a half years. 
If our people cannot learn the lesson thus 
taught, and if we ever again incHne to the 
teachings of the pacifists, then indeed we 
shall surely be brayed in a mortar before 
our folly depart from us. Undoubtedly 
before we went into this war there were 
plenty of women, and just about the same 
number of men, of the ostrich type who 
believed that if they hid their heads so 
that they could not see war it would not 
come. Many of them were good, intelli- 
gent people who had never been taught 



80 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

unpleasant international truths and who 
were cruelly wronged by astute and un- 
conscientious leadership in high places. 
Many were simply fatuous. They "prayed 
that the nation might ever be dedicated 
to peace" and did not realize that the 
prayer could be made effective only if they 
at the same time made ready against war. 
They had forgotten one half of the old 
Cromwellian adage: "Trust in the Lord 
and keep your powder dry!" They bleated 
a make-believe trust; and they let the 
powder grow wet. Those "mothers of the 
land" who were fit to be the spiritual heirs 
of the women of the Revolution and the 
Civil War, had raised their sons to be sol- 
diers for the right, to put justice before 
peace, and to be proudly ready to give 
everything, life itself, when the nation 
needed the sacrifice. The other poor 
mothers, less farsighted or less wise, who 
took the attitude Senator Lewis describes, 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 81 

and the men who were their fitting mates, 
with quavering timidity refused to do the 
only thing that might avert war ; and now 
the war has come anyhow, and their boys, 
untrained in soul and body, are in the 
draft army — ^where, thank Heaven, they 
will be trained, where they will stand be- 
side the other boys who were raised to be 
soldiers for the right, and out of which 
they will be turned as up-standing, self- 
respecting American citizens, with neither 
a spiritual nor a physical stoop in the 
shoulders, and able to look the whole 
world straight in the eyes without flinch- 
ing. 

We are a nation of tremendous poten- 
tial strength. We cannot now by any 
possible exertion utilize more than a small 
fraction of that strength until after over 
a year from the time when we were 
dragged into the war. And even in 
this belated fashion we cannot use that 



82 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

strength with full efficiency unless we 
clearly understand the lamentable harm 
we have done by refusing to harden 
it or make it useful during these fate- 
ful years. Our shortcomings and needs 
leap to the eye when we compare ourselves 
with certain small commonwealths. Por- 
tugal, one year after going to war, put 
(by transport over the ocean) 75,000 
trained soldiers at the front. This is as 
if in February we put a million and a half 
fighting men into the firing line. To do 
relatively as much as Canada and Aus- 
tralia have done we ought to put five mil- 
lion men under arms. Some of our advo- 
cates — and exponents — of delay have 
stated that the English took two years 
and a half before making their land forces 
efficient in this war. In the first place the 
statement is untrue; after a year and a 
half the British Army became a formid- 
able fighting machine. In the next place. 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 83 

the argument amounts to saying that we 
should refuse to profit by the mistakes of 
the British, and should repeat them all 
over — and amplify them — on our own ac- 
count. Finally, these soft apologists of 
inefficiency forget that the British during 
the year and a half before their army be- 
came relatively as efficient as the armies 
of the Germans and the French, never- 
theless bore a constantly increasing share 
of the burden. Within the first three 
months of the war they had placed over 
two himdred thousand men in the thick 
of the hardest fighting; steadily they in- 
creased the numbers, more than making 
good the awful losses; steadily they im- 
proved guns and men, using at first (be- 
cause of lack of shells — and of training) 
double the number of men for a given 
frontage that the French used; but using 
them, and constantly extending their 
share of the line, and thus relieving the 



84 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

hard-pressed French. If during the first 
ten months of the war England had done 
as little as we have done in the past ten 
months, gallant France would surely have 
broken. If she had prepared her strength 
after war broke out in as leisurely a man- 
ner as we have done, the war would now 
be over and Germany enthroned as world- 
victor. 

Our business is to exert the largest pos- 
sible fraction of our strength at the earli- 
est possible moment, and then to exert our 
constantly growing strength as fast as 
with the utmost energy and efficiency we 
can develop it, until we win the peace of 
overwhelming victory. This war, as far 
as we are concerned, was brought on by 
German militarism and American pacifism 
working together. To let either or both 
of them dictate the peace that is to end it 
would be an immeasureable disaster. We 
should not have any negotiations with 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 85 

those who committed and who glory in 
the Lusitania infamy, the rape of Bel- 
gium, and the hideous devastation and 
wholesale murders and slavery in the con- 
quered countries; and the Hearsts and 
La Follettes and Germanized Socialists 
and I. W. W. and Pacifist leaders who 
advocate such negotiations are the ene- 
mies of this nation and of all mankind. 
We are fighting for the fundamental 
sanctities of life and decencies of civiliza- 
tion. We are fighting for the liberty of 
every well behaved nation, great or small, 
to have whatever government it desires 
and to live unharming others and un- 
harmed by others. We are sending our 
troops to fight abroad so that they may 
not have to fight at home. Germany must 
be beaten, and the Prussianized militaris- 
tic autocracy of the HohenzoUems hum- 
bled or the world will not be safe for lib- 
erty-loving peoples. We must fight this 



86 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

war through to victory no matter what 
the cost in time or money or in the blood 
of our bravest and dearest. 

And on this point again let us always 
insist that our rulers do not shame us and 
weaken our moral fibre by loose rhetoric, 
but speak only when they have pondered 
their words, and make good the words 
when once spoken. In actual fact we en- 
tered the war only because we had a spe- 
cial grievance against Germany, a griev- 
ance of so grave a character that we ex- 
posed ourselves to humiliation, we were 
guilty of a tame lack of self-respect, when 
we did not go to war two years earlier; 
for when the Lusitania was sunk we 
should have acted as we did finally act 
last February; in the intervening two 
years there had been no change in the sit- 
uation; indeed our condonation of the 
Lusitania's sinking had put us in a slightly 
worse position — and unquestionably our 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 87 

people would have been more united, and 
more heartily ready to back the war, if 
we had acted with instant and resolute 
courage at the time of the great tragedy. 
When once we did act, and entered the 
war, we became committed to our Allies, 
and any man who has since assailed any 
one of them, or defended Germany, or 
sought an inconclusive peace is a traitor 
to this country. Our grievance against 
Germany was not merely special but 
ample and intolerable. A few weeks 
later, however, we announced that our 
purpose was to make the world safe for 
democracy. Unless this statement was a 
piece of mere empty magniloquence, of 
highfalutin' rhetoric, it pledged us to im- 
mense sacrifice in a hard, dangerous cru- 
sade, eminently righteous but for an ob- 
ject in which our own concern was slight. 
Personally, I was and am eagerly ready 
to enter into such a crusade, if our people 



88 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

seriously intend to put it through; but our 
people ought thoroughly to understand 
what it means. We were not bound to 
enter on it. Our grievance was against 
Germany, and we could with honor have 
joined with our allies to war against her 
until she was overthrown, and then make 
peace in such fashion as to guarantee jus- 
tice to them and to us, and to make the 
world a little safer for all of us in conse- 
quence. But a pledge to "make the world 
safe for democracy" is a solemn engage- 
ment to smash the two nations which most 
conspicuously make democracy unsafe 
within their own borders — Austria and 
Turkey (and to punish Bulgaria is a neces- 
sary incident thereto). Any peace which 
leaves Turkey in Europe, and which 
leaves the Armenians, the Syrian Chris- 
tians, the Jews and the Arabs under 
Turkish rule, conspicuously fails to make 
the world safe for democracy — or, for 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 89 

liberty and decency; Germany is a dan- 
ger to her neighbors; but the Poles, 
Danes and Frenchmen or men with 
French hearts over whom she tyrannizes 
are numerically only a fraction as nu- 
merous as the mass of men of differ- 
ent races to whom liberty is denied by the 
dual tyranny of the Germans and Mag- 
yars of Austria-Hungary. I speak with 
no bitterness towards either the Austrian 
Germans or the Hungarian Magyars; I 
would protest against seeing any other 
race tyrannize over them; I merely wish 
that they shall tyrannize over no one else. 
Until within a very few years of the out- 
break of this war, I had hoped for Austria 
a great future — especially during the long 
period when the internal condition of 
Servia made it seem hopeless to look to 
her as a regenerative influence in the Bal- 
kan Peninsula. I had hoped that Austria 
would solve the exceedingly complex and 



90 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

difficult situation of southwestern Europe 
by developing into a great federal com- 
monwealth, in which the German, the 
Magyar, the Pole, the Czech- Slovak, the 
Rouman, the Jugo-Slav, and perhaps 
others, might join; each sovereign within 
his own linguistically and ethnically 
rounded out and self-governing state; 
but all united under one rule which should 
keep the peace among these different 
states, and should use their common 
strength to forbid aggression against 
them from without. I had hoped this 
when Bosnia and Herzegovina were taken 
by Austria; it seemed as if such a policy 
of federation on a footing of just equality 
opened the way for a great and unique 
career to Austria ; the heir apparent whose 
assassination was the occasion (not the 
cause) of this war was reputed to hold 
such views; and I gave them up with un- 
feigned reluctance, and only when it was 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 91 

evident that they were no longer tenable. 
This war has shown that Austria has be- 
come a subject-ally of Germany and an 
enemy of freedom and civilization. Un- 
less we resolutely intend to break up both 
Austria and Turkey, and insist on liberty 
for the subject races in the two countries, 
our talk about "making the world safe 
for democracy" is a sham. 

People forget very easily, and it is hard 
for them to learn even the plainest lessons 
from history. There have been of recent 
years, and still are, certain forces at work 
among us which ominously resemble cer- 
tain of the forces which worked to ruin 
France at the end of the Empire of Napo- 
leon the Third. In De La Gorce's ex- 
ceedingly able, delightfully written, and 
sombre History of the Second Empire, 
there is a very vivid account of the French 
mental attitude at the time of the Exposi- 
tion of 1867. This Exposition was loudly 



92 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

heralded as ushering in an era of perma- 
nent international peace; and the materi- 
alists, the pacifists, the sordid profiteers, 
and the wild demagogues and doctrinaire 
reformers all joined in saying that there 
was to be thereafter no danger of inter- 
national wars, and that everybody need 
think only of money, and enjoyment, and 
of two kinds of indulgence — indulgence 
in more or less gross bodily pleasure, and, 
as an antidote, indulgence in a more or 
less unhealthy sentimentality. Then, just 
as the hard money getters, and the gay 
pleasure lovers, and the foolish senti- 
mentalists had all determined to live on 
the theory that serious war was a danger 
of the past, came the notice, from those 
best competent to judge, that the country 
must prepare to defend itself against the 
military power of others. Says La Gorce: 
(I condense and translate freely) — "The 
shock was equally great to the lovers of 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 93 

material pleasure, to the dreamers of uni- 
versal peace [this was just fifty years ago 
— how often war has come since!] and to 
the credulous optimists who with easy 
faith had accepted the theories of the Gov- 
ernment. . . . The statement that *the in- 
fluence of a nation depends upon the num- 
ber of men it can put under arms' sounded 
repulsively material to an intelligent peo- 
ple dreaming of the fraternity of nations 
and of perpetual peace. The sentimental 
humanitarianism preached by the Govern- 
ment had been accepted by the rank and 
file of the people ; and now, when the Gov- 
ernment had turned round, the people had 
only to recall its former teachings in order 
to justify resistance of its new precepts. 
The love of easy living, the weakening of 
the sense of collective duty, had made the 
idea of self-sacrifice very unpleasant. The 
old martinets of the regular army refused 
to believe that there was anything wrong 



94 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

with that army. Critics of what had been 
done were told that it was unbecoming 
pubhcly to expose the shortcomings of the 
Government, lest the enemies of the coun- 
try be encouraged, and the faith of the 
people disturbed. Congressmen who were 
desirous to placate their constituents made 
much of the National Guard; [only a very 
few leaders] spoke with sincerity and 
foresight, warning their fellow country- 
men that great wars in the future were 
inevitable, and that it was well to be wise 
and ready before the event and not after 
it. The Legislators and their constituents 
were to blame for refusing to take account 
of future perils ; but the principal respon- 
sibihty rested on the [Executive] Govern- 
ment, to which the people had submitted 
in a spasm of servile obedience while it led 
them wrong but which they followed par- 
tially and doubtfully when late in the day 
it turned to the path of wisdom." 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 95 

Surely there are unpleasant analogies 
between what is thus described, and what 
we have of recent years seen in our own 
country. Surely, the same overwhelming 
disaster would have befallen us this year 
that overwhelmed France nearly half a 
century ago, had not we, more fortunate 
than the France of 1870, found our folly 
and weakness at least temporarily pro- 
tected by the fleets and armies of other 
nations. Let us profit by the lesson; and 
while we thankfully accept the fact that 
others have saved us from the pimish- 
ment for imwisdom, let us beware of mis- 
reading the lesson; and the only way by 
which to show that we have read it aright, 
is to show by our actions that never again 
will we be caught in such a condition of 
complete unpreparedness, of unreadiness 
and inability to do our duty by ourselves 
and by others. 

The young Americans like those I am 



96 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

addressing owe to their country the duty 
of leadership; and this leadership is 
needed both for our immediate task and 
our ultimate task. The immediate task 
is to win this war. All our immediate 
energies ought now to be bent towards 
this end. We must accept no peace ex- 
cept the peace of overwhelming triumph. 
The energy and business efficiency and 
individual courage and self-reliance which 
are among our national traits are slowly 
enabling us to overcome the frightful 
handicap created by our refusal to pre- 
pare during the two and a half years be- 
fore we drifted into the war. During the 
last ten months we have not done a half 
or a quarter of what we could have done. 
But even the exertion of a half or a quar- 
ter of our giant strength will by the end 
of a year produce good results. There is 
now reason to hope that within a year or 
so of the time when we entered the war— 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 97 

that is, by the end of the winter, or in the 
early spring of 1918 — we shall be able to 
begin seriously to fight instead of merely 
paying others to fight for us, and that we 
shall become a ponderable element in the 
war. Six months later we ought to have 
begun to be one of the great factors in the 
war. We can be sure that our armies at 
the front and that our fleets and squad- 
rons will do well and bravely, and that we 
shall hold our heads high because of their 
valor. Theirs is the great task, theirs will 
be the great glory. Let us who stay be- 
hind back them in every way! 

The ultimate task of the young men of 
today of the type of those whom I ad- 
dress, is so to lead the generation now 
coming on the stage that this nation shall 
assure its international safety by grasping 
and acting on the fundamentals of duty. 
Most certainly the nation can be redeemed 
from mere gross, self-indulgent material- 



98 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

ism and from the silly, sham-sentimental- 
ity which so often goes hand in hand with 
materialism. I sincerely believe that on 
the whole we of this nation have a little 
finer material on which to work than is 
true of any other nation ; that in our land 
there are on the whole better ideals than 
elsewhere of the duty of man and woman 
to one another, to their neighbors, to their 
country, and to the world at large. I do 
not see how any man can go through the 
camps where our army is now being 
trained without feeling a thrill of pride 
in the manliness, energy and resourceful- 
ness of the men who are there slowly ac- 
quiring not only the bodies of soldiers but 
the feelings of patriots. Those camps are 
today the great universities of American 
citizenship, and we ought to make them 
permanent features of our national life. 
There could be no finer material for citi- 
zenship than that afforded by the men 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 99 

and women of this nation; and all the 
greater will be our reproach if we permit 
it to be wasted or warped out of shape. 

I am not here discussing those qualities 
of personal and social morahty which 
stand as basic in all healthy national life. 
At the moment I am only asking you for 
such leadership in our public affairs as 
shall make this nation spiritually and 
physically ready and eager both to do full 
and generous justice to others and also 
to secure justice from others, and espe- 
cially from the strong. This nation must 
be able to develop within itself such pow- 
ers as will in turn make it able to defend 
itself from all outside aggression, and also 
make it able, with some modicum of suc- 
cess, to work toward making things a 
little better in the international world. 
And there must be at least an approxima- 
tion to strength and justice in our own 
internal dealings or we shall assuredly. 



100 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

when the crisis comes, lack the power to 
defend ourselves against any formidable 
outside enemy. 

If our people refuse to profit by the 
teachings of histoiy, let them at any rate 
learn by what is now happening in the 
world, before their eyes. The case of 
Russia is full of melancholy instruction 
for us, if only we refuse to treat it as 
having happened in another firmament. 
Let us translate what has occurred into 
the terms of reaction and of semi-revolu- 
tionary folly which apply in our own coun- 
try; and you men of University training 
should throw your whole strength equally 
against both the foolish or sinister repre- 
sentatives of reaction who invite and jus- 
tify revolution, and the foolish or sinister 
apostles of revolution who invite and jus- 
tify reaction. 

With us the reactionaries are the men, 
and above all the very wealthy men, who 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 101 

permit the maxims of an outward indus- 
trial creed to blind them to the need that 
we shall be our brother's keepers to the 
extent not only of securing him full jus- 
tice but of training him aright, lest he lay 
hands on the pillars of the temple of civ- 
ilization and bring the whole structure 
toppling down to bury both him and us. 
The selfish reactionaries of business and 
politics, whether great or small, if they 
had their way unchecked would invite the 
fate that the Tsar's bureaucracy brought 
on Russia. 

And in Russia, on the morrow after the 
forces of despotism were overthrown, the 
forces of anarchy and disorder, under the 
leadership of demagogues and sinister or 
impractical doctrinaires, became the worst 
foes of liberty and democracy. So it is 
here. The Hearsts and La Toilettes and 
Stones and Bergers and Hillquits, the 
agitators of the I. W. W. and the Ger- 



102 NATIONAL STRENGTH 

manized- American socialists, are of pre- 
cisely the same type as the men who seek 
to tear free Russia to pieces, whose ex- 
cesses and follies have thrown great tracts 
of her territory mider the feet of the Ger- 
man aggressor, and who continuously 
threaten either to render her a byword 
of failure or else to re-enthrone some form 
of the old tyranny. Let us shun as we 
would shun the plague, both the White 
Terror of reaction and the Red Terror 
of revolution. France was brought to dis- 
aster by the tyranny of the Old Regime; 
and then again by the Robespierres, Dan- 
tons, Heberts and Marats, whose wick- 
edness almost eclipsed that of the most 
evil of their royal predecessors. The ex- 
tremists of reaction and the extremists of 
revolution play into one another's hands; 
and all men of courage, patriotism and 
foresight must war with equal energy 
against both, under penalty of being false 



INTERNATIONAL DUTY 103 

to the cause of orderly liberty, alike in 
this Republic and in the world at large. 

Justice at home must be the basis of our 
strength. But justice is not enough. On 
it we must build the strength, else the jus- 
tice will vanish before alien aggression. A 
nation of freemen can only remain free if 
the freemen in time of peace train them- 
selves to defend their freedom in war. 
There is no title to the enjoyment of a 
right which is not properly based upon the 
performance of a duty, and the funda- 
mental national duty is the duty of self- 
defence just as the fundamental political 
right is the suffrage. Universal suffrage 
should be based on universal service. A 
cardinal feature of the permanent policy 
of this hberty-loving democratic Republic 
should be the acceptance of the principle 
of universal obhgatory military training 
and military service for all our young men. 



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i'lill 



